How do I re-use Capybara sessions between tests? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I want to keep on using the same session and by that I mean Rails' session between various Test::Unit integration tests that use Capybara. The Capybara::Session object is the same in all the tests as it is re-used, but when I access another page in another test, I'm immediately logged out.
Digging in I found that capybara_session.driver.browser.manage.all_cookies is cleared between one test and the next.
Any ideas how? or why? or how to avoid it?
Trying to work-around that, I saved the cookie in a class variable and re-added later by running:
capybara_session.driver.browser.manage.add_cookie(##cookie)
and it seems to work, the cookie is there, but when there's a request, the cookie gets replaced for another one, so it had no effect.
Is there any other way of achieving this?

Answer 1

Add the following after your capybara code that interacts with the page:
Capybara.current_session.instance_variable_set(:#touched, false)
or
page.instance_variable_set(:#touched, false)
If that doesn't work, these might help:
https://github.com/railsware/rack_session_access
http://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2012/01/05/capybara-cucumber-and-how-the-cookie-crumbles/

Answer 2

If what you are doing is trying to string together individual examples into a story (cucumber style, but without cucumber), you can use a gem called rspec-steps to accomplish this. For example, normally this won't work:
describe "logging in" do
it "when I visit the sign-in page" do
visit "/login"
end
it "and I fill in my registration info and click submit" do
fill_in :username, :with => 'Foo'
fill_in :password, :with => 'foobar'
click_on "Submit"
end
it "should show a successful login" do
page.should have_content("Successfully logged in")
end
end
Because rspec rolls back all of its instance variables, sessions, cookies, etc.
If you install rspec-steps (note: currently not compatible with rspec newer than 2.9), you can replace 'describe' with 'steps' and Rspec and capybara will preserve state between the examples, allowing you to build a longer story, e.g.:
steps "logging in" do
it "when I visit the sign-in page" #... etc.
it "and I fill in" # ... etc.
it "should show a successful" # ... etc.
end

Answer 3

You can prevent the call to #browser.manage.delete_all_cookies that happens between tests by monkey patching the Capybara::Selenium::Driver#reset! method. It's not a clean way of doing it, but it should work...
Add the following code to your project so that it is executed after you require 'capybara':
class Capybara::Selenium::Driver < Capybara::Driver::Base
def reset!
# Use instance variable directly so we avoid starting the browser just to reset the session
if #browser
begin
##browser.manage.delete_all_cookies <= cookie deletion is commented out!
rescue Selenium::WebDriver::Error::UnhandledError => e
# delete_all_cookies fails when we've previously gone
# to about:blank, so we rescue this error and do nothing
# instead.
end
#browser.navigate.to('about:blank')
end
end
end
For interest's sake, the offending line can be seen in Capybara's codebase here: https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara/blob/master/lib/capybara/selenium/driver.rb#L71

Answer 4

It may be worth posting the reason why you need this kind of behaviour. Usually, having the need to monkey patch Capybara, is an indication that you are attempting to use it for something it was not intended for. It is often possible to restructure the tests, so that you don't need the cookies persisted across integration tests.